Abbot Jeremy Driscoll, O.S.B.

If you look at the map of Mount Angel Abbey, you’ll find a beautiful, peaceful campus with a Romanesque-style church, a thriving retreat center, a vibrant seminary, an award-winning theological library, a coffee shop, and a monastic brewery. But there’s another Mount Angel map—one with roots in a 1500-year-old Benedictine tradition that guides the hours and days and routines of the 50 monks who call Mount Angel home. This “other” map is one of interiority—it’s full of mystery and silence and prayer. And this has been Abbot Jeremy Driscoll’s home for the past 50 years. Originally from Idaho, Abbot Jeremy came to Mount Angel for seminary school and at age 22 decided it was the place where he would devote his life to God as a monk. In 1973, he became a Benedictine monk, and he was ordained a priest at Mount Angel in 1981. Abbot Jeremy was sent to Rome to study patristics and Church fathers at the Augustinianum Patristic Institute and earned a doctoral degree at the Pontificio Ateneo Sant’ Anselmo. For about 20 years he was assigned to teach half the year in Rome and half the year teaching in the seminary at Mount Angel. He has written many books, some that involve his scholarly work on the church fathers, and some that are written with a wider audience in mind, such as A Monk’s Alphabet: Moments of Stillness in a Turning World, What Happens at Mass, and Awesome Glory: Resurrection in Scripture, Liturgy, and Theology. In 2005 he was appointed by Pope John Paul II as consultor to the Congregation for Divine Worship, an appointment that was renewed under Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. In 2016, he was elected the 12th abbot of his community. He continues to teach on the liturgy and eucharist and ways to find God in all things. “If you can still your spirit enough,” he says, “everyone you meet is God’s way of speaking to you. A blade of grass, a shard of light. It’s beautiful. Everything is beautiful if you recognize it as a gift.”